The moral travesty of Israel demanding Arab and Iranian money for its own ‘Nakba

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The moral travesty of Israel demanding Arab and Iranian money for its own ‘Nakba

Ramzy Baroud @RamzyBaroud ‏

The game is afoot. Israel, believe it or not, is demanding that seven Arab countries and Iran should pay
$250 billion as compensation for what it claims was the forceful
expulsion of Jews from Arab countries during the late 1940s. The events
that Israel cites allegedly occurred at a time when Zionist Jewish
militias were actively uprooting nearly one million Palestinian Arabs
and systematically destroying their homes, villages, and towns
throughout Palestine.

The Israeli announcement,
which reportedly followed “18 months of secret research” conducted by
the government’s Ministry of Social Equality, should not be filed under
the ever-expanding portfolio of Israel’s shameless misrepresentations of
history. It is actually part of a calculated effort by the Israeli
government, especially by Minister Gila Gamliel, to create a
counter-narrative to the legitimate demand for the implementation of the
Right of Return for Palestinian refugees ethnically cleansed by Jewish militias between 1947 and 1948.

There
is a reason behind the Israeli urgency to reveal such questionable
research: the relentless US-Israeli attempt over the past two years to
dismiss the rights of Palestinian refugees, to question their numbers by
re-defining who they are and to marginalise their grievances. It is all
part and parcel of the ongoing plot disguised as the “Deal of the
Century”, with the clear aim of removing from the table all major issues
that are central to the Palestinian struggle for freedom.

“The
time has come to correct the historic injustice of the pogroms [against
Jews] in seven Arab countries and Iran, and to restore, to hundreds of
thousands of Jews who lost their property, what is rightfully theirs,” said Gamliel.

The
phrase “…to correct the historic injustice” is no different to that
used by Palestinians who have for 70 years and counting been demanding
the restoration of their rights as per UN Resolution 194.
The deliberate conflating of the Palestinian narrative and the Zionist
narrative is aimed at creating parallels, with the hope that a future
political agreement will result in grievances cancelling each other out.

Contrary to what Israeli historians want us to believe, though, there was no forced mass exodus
of Jews from Arab countries and Iran. What took place was a massive
campaign orchestrated by Zionist leaders at the time to replace
Palestine’s indigenous Arab population with Jewish immigrants from all
over the world. The ways in which this mission was achieved often involved violent Zionist plots, especially in Iraq.

In fact, the call for Jews to gather in Israel from all corners of the world remains the rallying cry of Israeli leaders and their Christian Evangelical supporters.
The former want to ensure a Jewish majority in the state, while the
latter is seeking to fulfill a Biblical condition for their long-awaited
Armageddon and Rapture. To hold Arabs and Iran responsible for this
bizarre and irresponsible behaviour is a transgression of the true
historical narrative in which neither Gamliel nor her ministry is
interested.

On the other hand, and unlike what Israeli military
historians often claim, the expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine in
1947-48 (and the subsequent purges of the native population that
followed the war of 1967) was a premeditated act of ethnic cleansing and genocide. It has been (and remains) part of a long-term and carefully calculated campaign that, from the very start, served as the main strategy at the heart of the Zionist movement’s “vision” for the Palestinian people.

“We must expel the Arabs and take their place,” wrote
Israel’s founder, military leader and first Prime Minister, David Ben
Gurion in a letter to his son, Amos, in October 1937. That was over a
decade before Plan D (for Dalet) — which saw the destruction of the
Palestinian homeland at the hands of Ben Gurion’s militias and Zionist
terrorist groups — was put into action.

Palestine “contains vast
colonisation potential,” Ben Gurion also wrote, “which the Arabs neither
need nor are qualified to exploit.” This clear declaration of a
colonial project in Palestine, communicated with the same kind of
unmistakable racist language and insinuations that accompanied all of
the other western colonial experiences throughout many centuries, was
not unique to Ben Gurion. He was merely paraphrasing what was, by then,
understood to be the crux of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine at the time.

As Palestinian Professor Nur Masalha concluded in his book, Expulsion of the Palestinians,
the idea of the “transfer” — the Zionist term for ethnic cleansing — of
the Palestinian people, was and remains fundamental to the realisation
of Zionist ambitions in Palestine. Palestinian Arab “villages inside the
Jewish state that resist ‘should be destroyed… and their inhabitants
expelled beyond the borders of the Jewish state’,” wrote Masalha,
quoting the History of the Haganah by Yehuda Slutsky. The Haganah
was the main Zionist militia which went on to become the Israel Defence
Forces, along with remnants from the Irgun and Stern Gang terrorist
groups.

What this meant in practice, as delineated by Palestinian
historian Walid Khalidi, was the joint targeting by various Jewish
militias of all population centres in Palestine systematically and
without exception. “By the end of April [1948], the combined
Haganah-Irgun offensive had completely encircled [the Palestinian city
of] Jaffa, forcing most of the remaining civilians to flee by sea to
Gaza or Egypt; many drowned in the process,” wrote Khalidi in Before Their Diaspora.

This
tragedy grew to affect all Palestinians everywhere within the borders
of their historic homeland. Tens of thousands of refugees joined up with
hundreds of thousands more at various dusty trails throughout the
country, growing in number as they walked further, before finally
pitching their tents in areas that were meant to be temporary refugee
camps. Alas, these remain Palestinian refugee camps today, spread across
the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

None
of this was accidental. The determination of the early Zionists to
establish a “national home” for Jews at the expense of the country’s
Palestinian Arab people was communicated, openly, clearly and repeatedly
throughout the formation of early Zionist thought, and the translation
of those well-articulated ideas into reality.

Seventy years have
passed since the Nakba — the Catastrophe of 1948 — and Israel has never
taken responsibility for its actions, and nor have Palestinian refugees
received any measure of justice, however small or symbolic. For Israel
to be seeking compensation from Arab countries and Iran is, therefore, a
moral travesty, especially as Palestinians refugees continue to
languish in refugee camps across Palestine and the Middle East.

Yes,
indeed “the time has come to correct the historic injustice,” but not
of what Israel is now alleging to have been “pogroms” carried out by
Arabs and Iranians. The real historic injustice is the ongoing and
tragic destruction of Palestine and its people.

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About the Author

admin - Arraale Mohamoud Jama Freelance Journalist and Human Rights Activist
Arraale, is a 20 year experience as a professional Journalist and human rights activist Over the years, worked for the major News Papers in Somaliland as a reporter, editor and contributor. 2008 established website Araweelo News Network, he currently runs a web site based in Somaliland. who is the specializes in the investigation and reporting on issues relating to human rights, democracy, and good governance. contact: Info@araweelonews.com jaamac132@gmail.com Send an SMS or MMS to + 252 63 442 5380 WhatsApp + 252 65 910 7347.